Microsoft sends flowers to IE6 funeral

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In case you didn’t know, IE6 died a slow death on March 1 and Microsoft sent flowers to a virtual funeral. Accessible at ie6funeral.com, anyone who felt deeply shattered by the loss of IE6 had a chance to mourn the browser’s death, send their condolences, and leave a remembrance. According to the site:

Internet Explorer Six, resident of the interwebs for over 8 years, died the morning of March 1, 2010 in Mountain View, California, as a result of a workplace injury sustained at the headquarters of Google, Inc. Internet Explorer Six, known to friends and family as “IE6,” is survived by son Internet Explorer Seven, and grand-daughter Internet Explorer Eight.

Hosted by a six-people strong web design firm Aten Design, the virtual funeral site has garnered lots of attention, including from Microsoft. The Redmond-based software giant sent flowers with the following note:

Thanks for the good times IE6, see you all @ MIX when we show a little piece of IE Heaven.

The Internet Explorer Team @ Microsoft

Released on August 27, 2001, IE6 has remained in the marketplace for nearly ten years stemming from the fact that corporations built their business apps on top of it. Despite later versions, IE6 has remained deeply entrenched in the enterprise world for many years as the certified browser guaranteed to support the existing business apps.

Don’t forget the fact that IE6 had also been bundled with Windows XP. In a way, IE6 owes its long-standing status to businesses’ reluctance to upgrade to Vista and a newer IE7 and IE8, a brain transplant that requires new investments to ensure that the existing business solutions run properly.

That’s part of the reason why IE6 still came as the second-best most-used browser, after IE8, in January 2010. The move to cloud computing, made IE6 a major obstacle because it doesn’t adhere well to the latest web standards so developers need to allocate additional resources just to make their web apps compatible with IE6. That, combined with Google’s announcement that it will be dropping IE6 support on YouTube by March 13 and Docs and Sites by March 1, signaled that the web no longer needs or wants IE6. Nevertheless, Microsoft will officially support IE6 until 2014.

Speak Your Mind

PitViper

Alas, poor IE6! I knew him, Firefox; a browser of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy; he hath borne me to the interwebs a thousand times; and now, how abhorred in my imagination it is! My gorge rises at it. Here hung those Favoites that I have used I know not how oft. Where be your gibes now?

Joshua Issac

Stupid Microsoft! IE6 will outlive IE7 and probably IE8 because unlike IE7 and IE8, IE6 has a *huge* number of corporate applications depending on it. Microsoft cannot kill IE6 unless it adds IE6 mode to IE9.